alaska848 wrote:
Hello Gustav! Great race. You are right, most of us aren't familiar with you and your teammates (except Blummenfeld). Can you tell us about your triathlon journey thus far? How did you get into the sport, why you race, etc? Also what does a normal training week look like for you and how did you prepare for the heat of Bermuda?
Please excuse my English. I am an athlete, not an academic ;)
My triathlon journey started many years ago in 2006, but that was only one race. I really got into the sport when the Triathlon Federation in Norway invited me and many other cyclists, swimmers and runners to an open weekend camp for youngsterst in Norway in 2010. I came from a cycling background, but was also a keen runner. In the camp the leders and coaches said I had to get in a swimming club to have anything to do in triathlon. I began swimming straight after that. The next year I was taken in to the national junior team, and have been a part of the national team ever since.
A normal training week is very different from where in the season we are. We had a bit of a "famous" training week during the offseason wich we spent in the alltitude in Sierra Nevada in Spain. Here we had free training meening we could do whatever we wanted traningwise and had no plan. It was i camp in collaboration with Olypiatoppen, the Norwegian Olympic commitee. There I had three of my longest bikerides ever. One of our coaches suggested we could ride around the whole mountain. We tried to do that, but used to long time to check the map and eating. We came about 270km and 4000 altitude meters. Some days later we tried again, a bit wiser. We rode the other way, started earlier in the morning, and almost had no stops. We had two of our coaches following in a car(yes, that is dedication!!) who filled our bottles and gave us bars, candy, chips and chocolate. We only had one real stop of 15minutes at a store to but some Fanta, Coca Cola and RedBull. We made it all the way around the mountain. 305km, 6000 a.m in about 11hours and 45minutes. But that is not a normal week. We normally train 30-35 hours a week during build up to season, with a lot of anaerobic treashold, and aerobic treashold. We try to take some lactate test during our training to get the most out of every training. We have test to ensure the training is going well, and adjust if it dont.
We did not really prepare that much for the heat of Bermuda because the weatherforcast did not show super hot weather. And it turned out fine. It was cold to train in Sierra Nevada with below freezing temperatures almost every day, but we had some time in both Marbella and Bermuda before the race, and felt quite climatized to the race in good time.
Norwegian National Team Athlete